Ericsson, Urban

Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology.

2007 (Swedish)Doctoral thesis, monograph (Other academic)

Alternative title[en]

Besieged People – Besieged Spaces : On Immigrant-making and Suburbs

Abstract [en]

This thesis analyses the notion of so-called “Invandrartäta förorter” [“Immigrant-dense suburbs”]. The aim of the study has been to analyse the haunting imagery of the Suburb and the Immigrant as portrayed in the Swedish media. The notion of a fantasy-frame is related to the “Invandrartäta förorten” [“Immigrant-dense suburb”] which is, in the main, a fantasy. Nevertheless, the study shows that the imagery is powerful in its racialised and discriminatory practice.

In the first part of the study the main focus is on the media narratives of the suburbs. Illustrations of how the idea of the “Invandrartäta förorten” [“Immigrant-dense suburb”] was created and how this place was, and still is, made to perform Otherness, are described. In the latter part of the study, the interwoven relationship between the fantasy-frame of the suburb and the mediated immigrant-made subject is in focus. Here the focus is on studying the attention and space of appearance that the media imposes on the immigrant-made individual when she or he is presented as representing this space.

By taking into account the media's editing techniques in press material, ways of inter­pretation and the recurring themes concerning this space of appearance, the analysis tries to shed light on the conditions of attention for the one who is portrayed in relation to this fantasy space. Such representations mix fear with enticing elements of the exotic. The imagery of the suburban fantasy-frame materialises in the individual portraits and daily life of the people who are depicted in relation to this space.

In the final part of the thesis, the notion of mime is used to describe a form of subversive strategy in relation to the imagery that the portrayed is evoked to display.